


Untouchable

by pollutedstar



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Desert Bluffs (Welcome to Night Vale), Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Kevin healing because i'm projecting, M/M, Past Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23297344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollutedstar/pseuds/pollutedstar
Summary: Charles knows Kevin carries his trauma not on his shoulders, but in his pressure points, in his veins and vital organs, and that he is constantly afraid of someone cutting him open and exposing his secret: he had been “not-happy” for a very long time in his life.
Relationships: Charles/Kevin (Welcome to Night Vale)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 69





	Untouchable

“Daddy, why does Kevin have those scars on his face?” Donovan asks as he’s being tucked into bed, drawing them along his cheeks with his fingers like Charles doesn’t know exactly what the boy is talking about.

Charles doesn’t like to lie to his son, and he doesn’t like to expose him to violence, but luckily he doesn’t have to do either. “I don’t know, honey. It’s really hard for him to talk about.”

“Can I ask him?”

“No. He’ll tell us when he’s ready.”

“Alright.”

As a theologist, he loves that his son questions things. And if he’s being honest, he’s deeply curious about Kevin’s past, too. It’s little things that keep springing up, and combined with the scars that litter his face and body, he knows someone hurt Kevin deeply in the past. As a pacifist, he wants to focus on the here and now, the healing process, and hold Kevin close when he needs and allows it. But a lower part of him, somewhere in his gut, wants to find the people responsible and make them suffer the way Kevin has.

As he sneaks out of Donnie’s room, closing the door quietly so he doesn’t disturb him, he turns to find Kevin sitting on his kitchen counter, waiting patiently. He had stayed for dinner, but Charles had suspected he would sneak out when he put his son to bed. He’s more than a little surprised to see he stayed.

In his hands, which are scarred deeply down the middle of his palms with old burn marks, he fidgets with a pocket knife. As soon as he sees Charles though, glancing up with his black eyes (just two of them - Charles has never seen his third eye open), he slips it into his pocket.

“Hey,” he greets softly, his voice too radio-esque. Charles comes forward, making his movements easily predictable and not too sudden. He can tell Kevin is nervous.

“What’s wrong?”

Kevin shakes his head, smiling the way he always smiles, the way that’s etched into his face. “Nothing,” he tries unconvincingly. Charles reaches out his hand, and Kevin takes it like it’s a lifeline. Charles doesn’t prod; Kevin clearly wants to tell him. He shudders, sighing. “I know the way I look makes people feel not-happy.”

This isn’t what Charles expected at all, and he straightens up, shaking his head. “What do you-”

Kevin lifts his other hand, gently shushing him. “Charles. Lying just makes everyone not-happy.” His voice is robotic and higher pitched than normal, and he clicks his tongue, trying to stop himself from returning fully to his Strex voice. “I heard Donovan when you laid him down,” he explains.

“Oh,” Charles murmurs, leaning forward. Kevin recoils and immediately tries to hide it, but Charles stops his movements.

“No, it’s okay. I mean, I barely have eyes. Every inch of body is covered in  _ something, _ scars or burns or whatever else they… just. Whatever else. And I know that. And I know that my third eye is swollen shut. And I want you to know that I don’t ever want to scare Donovan. I trust you, I really do, I just—” he stops, cut off by his own hiccuping sob that he’s trying to suppress, and his hand reaches up to his face, tugging the corners of his mouth up, and Charles desperately wants to hold him, but that’s not what Kevin needs right now. “I can’t say it. I can’t say what happened yet.”

Even if he can’t technically tell, Charles knows Kevin’s eyes are looking down.

“Sweetheart, kids just ask things like that,” he reassures, squeezing Kevin’s hand. “They just want to know everything, because the whole world is new to them. He’s not scared, he’s curious. But that doesn’t mean you have to explain things you’re not comfortable explaining, alright? Your past is your  _ past, _ and we’re here with you now.”

Kevin sags in relief, all of the nervous tension draining out of him, and he nearly collapses forward into Charles’ arms. Charles pulls him closer, running a hand through his hair, trying to silently assure him that an unchangeable past doesn’t mean an unchangeable future. He carefully avoids his neck, remembering the last time he’d touched there. (The man had fallen to the ground, immobilized briefly, shaking before standing back up, embarrassed and suddenly eager to get back to his home next to the Temple of Joy. Charles knows Kevin carries his trauma not on his shoulders, but in his pressure points, in his veins and vital organs, and that he is constantly afraid of someone cutting him open and exposing his secret: he had been “not-happy” for a very long time in his life.)

...

“With the Mudstone Abyss now complete, and our city now mayor-less, I want to remind everyone that temple services are…” he bites his tongue, a little soured by his own words, “They are no longer required. Mayoral power is passed to the church elders, myself included of course, and after much deliberation, we wanted to make it clear that we are a community founded on uprooting our past evils and correcting them. After all, we have all moved past our StrexCorp days.”

The “much deliberation” had come after the construction of the abyss, but not because of it. Kevin had finally snapped after finding the Temple of Joy vandalized, the phrase “StrexCorp: Believe in a Smiling God” spray-painted over and over again. Kevin knows the power has gotten to his head, the way StrexCorp had. It’s invaded his senses, making him feel important and untouchable. When Strex was in town, the more untouchable you were, the better. Kevin’s still trying to remind himself that Strex isn’t in town anymore.

_ Of course Strex is still in town. As long as you’re still here, Strex is here, invading these people, _ a little gut-wrenching, not-happy voice in the back of his head mutters.

_ A town needs its Voice, _ he tries to remind himself in a comforting way. He doesn’t let himself dwell on how scared he is that he might not be the town’s Voice now, and is instead speaking for darker beings that don’t even exist anymore.

He practically runs home from his studio when the show is over, ignoring his car in the parking lot, needing to feel productive in any capacity, mentally timing himself. By the time he bursts into his doors, he’s covered in sweat, but it feels familiar. He remembers when he would work for twenty hours straight and then host the show, which Strex considered his break, and then return to finish out the day. He remembers the grime he would come home covered in, the layer of filth that would have to be scrubbed and scrubbed until his scars were raw to make him feel clean. He remembers how lucky he had been to recreate himself as a new man, holy and prophetic and suddenly useful to Strex, at the very least for propaganda, and here he is, giving up his power, becoming touchable again, and he is terrified to think what the hands of god and the people might do to him now.

He puts himself in front of his mirror, even though he hates doing it, and he takes his fingers and shoves the corners of his mouth up. Even with his Forever Smile (oh Smiling God, he hasn’t used the proper name for it in ages) he still sometimes looks not-happy, and if he looks not-happy then he’ll make other people not happy, and it could all spiral from there until the entire town falls apart and Kevin will stand in the rubble, entirely responsible. He keeps pushing, prodding open his mouth so he can see as many teeth as possible, and a little blood starts dripping from his lips, but he doesn’t know where the split is. The taste of blood in his mouth is the same kind of sickening familiar that his skin is feeling. He wants to start it all over, fresh. He wants to peel his body apart and become a tool again.

“Kevin, what are you doing?” a soothing low voice asks behind him, and Kevin yanks his hands down, grabbing onto his sink. He isn’t supposed to need smile reminders, he’s the prophet, the Voice, he’s  _ Kevin, _ the last time he was caught needing to remind himself to smile—

Charles. Kevin recognizes his face and remembers where he is. His hands still clutch the linoleum of his sink, but Charles walks up behind him, his every move visible in the mirror, and places his own hands on Kevin’s white knuckles.

“Why are you here?” Kevin chokes out, his radio voice strained but present.

“I heard your show,” he starts, stiff and worried. “And I know it took a lot out of you to declare temple as no longer mandatory. I thought I would stop by.”

“How sweet of you!” Kevin exclaims, not in control of his own mouth, which is pulling itself into a smile. He feels programmed.

“Do you want me to hug you?” he asks gently. Kevin pauses, thinking,  _ I never want to be hugged again, _ before remembering that Charles hugs differently than Strex, and he nods his head vigorously.

He taps Kevin’s knuckles lightly, and one by one he pries them off the sink. Charles turns him around, and Kevin lets himself fall into his arms, wrapping himself around him.

“I’m feeling not-happy today, which makes me even more not-happy because I should be feeling happy,” Kevin tries to explain, and Charles knows he’s missing something, but he won’t press. 

“You know, you’re allowed to feel upset, or scared, or even things you don’t have words for. It isn’t just happy and not-happy.”

Kevin chuckles wetly, blood making him cough a little. “I’m always happy, Charles,” he forces out. “Even when I’m not-happy, I’m happy knowing I’ll be happy in the future.”

“That’s… that’s not a healthy attitude, Kevin.”

“Health is earned, and things are earned through payment,” he quotes numbly, remembering complaints of illnesses in the factories.

What Charles  _ wants _ to say is, “What the fuck?” in his loudest, angriest voice, not to Kevin, but to the small voice in Kevin’s head that’s telling him this. Instead, he says, “Kevin, you’re a human being. You have a right to be happy and healthy. It’s innate in your very existence.”

Kevin snorts, doubtful. “People don’t have innate rights, Charles.”

What Charles  _ wants _ to say is, “I don’t know who taught you that, but point them out to me and I will theologize them six feet into the sand.” Instead, he says, “Yes, we do. They’re called ‘human rights,’ and laws and religions are created to protect them.”

Finally, all Kevin can muster is, “I truly doubt my own humanity.”

And what Charles  _ wants _ to say is, “You try every day, and I don’t know what’s more human than that.” This time, that’s what he says. Kevin doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t believe him either. For being a prophet, he is a very bad believer.

...

Donnie loves his planes, and Kevin loves to watch him play with them. It doesn’t have anything to do with secret messages, or the codes that a possible future prophet might be translating, or theological power grabs, and has everything to do with the fact that Kevin loves Donnie. Not that he’s told anyone that, yet. He’s not sure when it’s okay to tell your…  _ boyfriend’s _ son that you love him, and he has no one to ask. So for now, he contentedly watches Donnie swing planes around in the air, only occasionally wondering if he had done the same as a child. (He doesn’t remember much about his younger years - probably a blessing, based on the things he does remember.)

“Kevin, what’s Strex?” Donnie randomly asks, and Kevin feels his entire body tense as he reaches for the knife at his side before he remembers it’s not there. He’d stopped wearing it to Charles’s house in case Donnie accidentally got a hold of it.

There was a time in Kevin’s life when he would have answered exactly how he was supposed to. He would have reached down to Donnie, split his own cheeks open in his Forever Smile, and said, “StrexCorp Synernists Incorporated is our protector, our creator, and our reckoning.  Look around you: Strex. Look inside you: Strex. Go to sleep: Strex. Believe in a Smiling God. StrexCorp. It is everything.” Even a few months ago, he doubts his mind would have been able to struggle past this programmed response. Now, to his astonishment, his tongue clicks, stopping him from talking until he can breathe properly and respond honestly.

“It was a very large business that did very bad things. It was hurtful to many people, and my old home. Why do you ask, hon?” he asks evenly, proud of his body and mind for remaining his entirely.

Donnie nods solemnly, his understanding going deeper than a five-year-old’s should, before returning to his planes. “I heard you say it on the radio. Daddy plays your show every day.”

Kevin’s smile becomes deep and real suddenly. “Every day?”

Charles, knocking on the wall so he doesn’t startle Kevin, speaks up as he walks into the room. “Of course I do, sunshine.”

Kevin turns around, and if his eyes hadn’t been mutilated, they would have welled up. His cheeks still flush though, and his smile stays pleasant and small. He’s learning that smiles don’t have to hurt to be genuine. Or rather, relearning.

Charles approaches him, kissing his forehead, above his third eye, and sits down next to him. Kevin throws his legs over Charles’ lap, hiking up his long orange skirt that he wore for today’s service. Attendance is down, and he keeps reminding himself that it’s okay because he wants it to be based in faith, not fear. Bitterly, he thinks to himself that fear worked better.

“What happened to StrexCorp?” the young boy asks, his eyes still on his planes.

Kevin winces. He had assumed the conversation was over. Charles feels it and tenses up, too.

“It’s a long story,” Kevin laughs, strained and high-pitched. “For another day. I don’t think I’m quite ready to tell it.”

“Not ready to tell it? Is it about your scars?”

“Donovan,” Charles scolds gently, squeezing Kevin’s ankle reassuringly. “I told you it’s rude to ask people things they’re not ready to talk about.”

“It is where I got them. I’ll tell you about it later, alright, Donnie?” Kevin murmurs, his hands subconsciously reaching for his face. He doesn’t know if he wants to make his smile bigger or cover it completely, and in the end he just holds his hands in the air, halfway through a half-decided action. Charles reaches for those hands, gentle, knowing he sometimes gets psychosomatic pains from the burn scars there, and they sit in the living room as a family.

Later, after Donovan insists on Kevin reading him a bedtime story with Charles, the two of them get ready for bed in Charles’s room. Kevin is always quicker, efficient to his core, stripping immediately, folding his clothes into a pile, and sliding on a loose nightgown over his boxers. Charles, on the other hand, always takes his time, stretching and yawning all the while, his clothes being tossed into the hamper at the foot of his bed and not bothered with again until laundry day at the end of the week. Usually Kevin enjoys watching Charles change and ready for bed, but today his black eyes are vacant, and his knees are pulled up to his chest as he leans against the headboard.

As Charles is buttoning his final button, Kevin speaks up for the first time since Donovan fell asleep. “They took the town, Charles. We. We tried so hard.”

Charles sits down on the bed, giving Kevin enough distance that he doesn’t feel confined, but close enough that he can reach out if he needs it. He doesn’t reach out, but he looks up into Charles’s eyes.

“I know this place is fucked up, Charles,” he finally confesses in a low, weary voice. Charles feels nauseous from the look of defeat on Kevin’s face. “I… struggle to admit it.”

“Because it’s your home, Kevin,” he starts, but he’s cut off.

“No. Because it  _ was _ my home.”

Charles doesn’t know what to say to that. He knows the implications of the town being named Desert Bluffs Too. He’d just never thought about it with the intense fervor that was quickly filling Kevin.

“I wish you could have seen it, babe,” he murmurs, and his eyes aren’t focused, lost in some place and time that had once matched the way he had needed it to. “I wish you could have seen  _ me, _ but that’s. Beside the point. It was so beautiful. I miss the sunset most of all, I think. Or maybe the sunrise. And there was my old radio station, before they destroyed it, before they—” Kevin gags, gripping the sheets. Charles leans forward but is stopped by Kevin shaking his head. “We were all so happy back then. And not because it was happy or not-happy. Because there were lots of emotions, and because we had found our little community within each other. Oh Smiling God, I wish you could have seen it all  _ before. _ This place is… well, it makes me  _ happy, _ of course it does, and the town is trying again but. It’s limping. You can tell. This political tension, these religious bindings, the conflict between the past, the past’s past, and the now. It’s chasing us. We check corners, we watch shadows. People can’t look at my face anymore, and I can’t tell if they hate me or they can’t bear to see the visual reminders of  _ that _ all over me. I’m not just the Voice of a town anymore, I’m the prophet of a corporation, and everywhere I go there’s a wake of grievances or worship, nothing in between. Everything was in between, back in Desert Bluffs. Everyone was just human, see, and now we’re people who have been pushed to our limits and then pushed past that, too, and I don’t know if you can really consider the ones who survived that still human. I just. I wish Donovan and you could have been there  _ before.” _

Charles feels his own eyes start to well up, a longing settling in his bones for peace in Kevin’s mind. He holds out his hands, and Kevin takes one, placing his other one over his swollen third eye with a gentleness that Kevin rarely extends to himself.

“Kevin… do you want to talk about what StrexCorp did?” he asks carefully, and Kevin shakes his head.

“Not tonight,” he whispers, and then slides his way down into a fetal position on the bed, his back facing the wall, as always. Charles clicks off the lamp, the blackout shades already pulled down to give the illusion of a sunless night, and lays down, leaving Kevin room. The two of them face each other, and eventually Kevin murmurs, “Can you hold me?”

Charles depletes the space between them so entirely that he wonders if there is any molecular distance at all between them. (He hopes there isn’t.) With one hand in Kevin’s hair and one on his lower back, he breathes in deeply, and for the entire night he dreams of a hot desert and fast food drive-throughs with a black-eyed blonde-haired beauty.

...

As Donnie runs around with his friends and Kevin bites into his ice cream, Charles runs his fingers along the faded remnants of Kevin’s tattoos. They are old, the ink clearly worn, and covered in scars and burns like the rest of his body. It’s difficult to discern the exact patterns, but he tries anyway, his fingers as gentle as he can make them. Kevin, briefly glancing away from Donnie to watch his deft hands, thinks that this would probably tickle if he had all the nerve endings he’s supposed to have. Feeling in his arms is always a little touch and go, and back in his StrexCorp days it had been a blessing. Now, though, he finds himself wishing he knew what these dark hands on his tattoos felt like.

“Where did you get these done?” Charles asks, pausing his ministrations to watch Donovan and have a spoonful of his own ice cream. It’s supposedly coffee flavored, but he’s never tasted coffee this bitter and angry. He eats it out of habit more than anything.

Kevin laughs the way he always does when Charles asks a question everyone in Desert Bluffs knows the answer to. “Silly, I didn’t get them anywhere! They appeared one night after I became the Voice of Desert Bluffs.” A little hollowly, he adds, “They used to move. And glow. They kind of just blend in now.”

“They… appeared?” Charles questioned. “On their own?”

“It’s the marking of a town’s Voice. That and the third eye, but that’s obvious.”

_ Not to me, _ Charles thinks. “The eye, that’s because you’re the radio host?”

Kevin bristles, his face falling a little bit. “I’m not just the radio host, Charles. I know everything about the town at all times. Even with my third eye damaged beyond repair, I have extra sight and a seventh sense for the events going on around town. I’m a  _ Voice _ because I was chosen to be one.”

“By who? The Smiling God?”

“The radio station existed long before the Smiling God. It’ll exist long after, too.”

His responses fascinates Charles. Kevin seems to see the radio station as something akin to the Temple of Joy, except much stronger. How can something exist before creation in Kevin’s mind?

“So the fact that you’re a Voice and also a prophet aren’t related?”

“Of course not. I’m the Voice naturally. It’s been in my blood, in my head, resting on my skin since I was born. I was only a prophet after the Smiling God revealed Itself.”

“Revealed Itself to you specifically, or were you chosen for that as well?”

“StrexCorp wouldn’t have chosen me if they had a say. They were… angry to say the least when I turned out to be their prophet,” Kevin snorts, and Charles feels his heart double its speed.

“StrexCorp controlled the temple?”

His black eyes become curious, looking at Charles as he leans forward. “Sweetheart, StrexCorp created the temple.”

Charles comes to the very sharp and sudden realization that while his mission when he came here had been to study the Smiling God and pick up a job as a professor of religious studies at a local college, he’s only accomplished the latter effectively. His understanding of Kevin’s religion is crumbling in front of him.

“They  _ created _ it? Why? What was its purpose? Why does everyone still worship it? How did you end up the proph—”

Kevin gently reaches out with his hand, placing it on Charles’s shoulder. “Write down your questions, love, or else I’m never going to be able to get through them all in an orderly fashion.”

As hard as he’s working on it, Charles knows that disorder still sets something deep inside of Kevin into a panic. He’s afraid of something coming for him, some catastrophic event or an act of the Smiling God. Normally Charles would see this as indicative of a compulsion, but the more he learns about Kevin’s past, the more it seems like rational instinct. So he lets Kevin gain a little of his composure back after being bombarded with so many questions and takes out a piece of notebook paper and a pen from his pocket, writing all his thoughts.

“You know,” Kevin murmurs, and Charles knows, despite his eyes being completely black that, he’s avoiding looking at him, “I like that…”

“What?” he asks gently, all thoughts of theology aside.

“You’re always so gentle when you touch me. It’s… thank you, is what I’m trying to say.”

Charles swallowed heavily, dropping his pen and paper to card a hand through Kevin’s hair, an action that makes the man almost melt. “Don’t thank me for that, sunshine. Just expect it.”

...

Donovan is doing cartwheels on the lawn. Or, rather, Donovan is attempting to do a six-year-old’s version of cartwheels on the lawn, and Kevin is cheering him on regardless.

“Oh, that was perfect!” exclaims Kevin, and he means it in the way that StrexCorp never did. It isn’t perfect because it’s flawless, but because he’s trying his hardest. It’s perfect because Kevin loves Donovan (even if he hasn’t found a way to tell him yet). There’s no such thing as a perfect cartwheel. It becomes perfect when you learn to accept it for what it is. “Do it again!”

Donnie begins to, throwing his hands up crookedly in the air and starting to tilt, but Charles interrupts by bringing lemonade outside from the house. The whole scene is rather domestic and unproductive, Kevin thinks to himself, and then he promptly stops caring. He takes the glass full of cold, black liquid and tentacle ice cubes and drinks almost all of it, refusing to deny himself something as simple and happy as this.

“Kevin,” Donnie pipes up, jumping onto his lap and nearly knocking over both of their drinks. “Can I come with you to the radio station today and do your show?”

Kevin laughs nervously, biting the scar on the inside of his cheek.

His new radio station isn’t anything like his StrexCorp one. A few months after Carlos had left, he’d doused it in so many cleaning solvents that he’d blacked out several times, cleansing it of blood and intestines and anything else that would remind him of his past. It’s not the appearance that makes him hesitant to allow Donnie to come with him. He’s cautious to allow people in the building who aren’t interns, and even the people who are allowed into the building are never allowed in his booth.

His old station had been his refuge, until the day it wasn’t. He still remembers when StrexCorp bought it with vivid clarity. He’d hissed under his breath to Vanessa that it wouldn’t last long. No one could  _ own _ the station, that would be like trying to own the Voice. And then StrexCorp did the impossible (or more, the unthinkable): just that.

So now that he’s rebuilt it from the ground up, it’s  _ his _ space. He’ll put his body in front of the doors (again) and be beaten until he’s actually dead this time before he lets someone try to control his broadcast.

Looking down into Donnie’s far too knowing eyes, though, and watching him smile in a way Kevin had never been trained to, he finds it difficult to tell this little boy no. That’ll surely be a problem in the future, but for now he’s content to spoil him to the ends of the vast desert.

“As long as your dad’s okay with it, I think that’d be neat,” Kevin finally says, his own lips tugging up. Charles nods his head when Donnie’s pleading eyes turn to him, and the boy glows with a deep black light, bouncing with excitement.

“Thank you so much! I love you, Kevin!” He wraps his arms tightly around the radio man before running back out the lawn, and Kevin doesn’t even have it in him to tell the boy to be careful, because his whole desert otherworld has turned upside down. He turns to Charles, his black eyes wide with panic, and Charles is smiling the widest grin Kevin has ever seen.

“He… he must have meant you,” Kevin stutters out. “Because you said he could go.”

“I definitely heard him say ‘Kevin,’” Charles teases, sitting next to his boyfriend on the porch swing. “That doesn’t sound anything like ‘Dad’ to me.”

Kevin’s throat feels tight and swollen, and he lifts his hand to it, swallowing harshly. “Is… is that okay with you?” he asks, knowing how long it had just been Charles and Donovan.

“Families love each other. Why wouldn’t I expect ours to?”

Kevin gasps wetly, a small laugh escaping his throat. His eyes can’t produce tears, but he knows this is very close to his own version of crying from happiness. He remembers crying, and he remembers happiness, Strex-approved happiness and Strex-unapproved crying, but this doesn’t feel like either of those emotions. It must be one of those feelings that isn’t just happy or not-happy.

He buries his head under Charles’s chin, never taking his eyes off of Donovan, and begins to plan how the boy can help during tonight’s broadcast.

...

Charles sits awkwardly in one of the benches that line the walls of the Temple of Joy, watching handfuls of Smiling God worshippers enter in bursts through the bone white front doors. Kevin formally invited him to the service this morning, and while Charles’s research had been extensive in the sense that he’s read every religious text available in the town and talked to several believers, he hadn’t actually attended a formal service yet. The first week he was in town, it was simply a matter of too much on his plate, but after he and Kevin had gotten involved and he realized how intense and borderline unhealthily close Kevin was to this religion, it felt invasive to attend only to take notes and study him. But, as Kevin had aptly pointed out this morning, it really wasn’t a proper research study if he didn’t try to experience what he was researching.

Kevin stands at the center of the circular building, underneath a chandelier built with what looks to be massive centipedes. Some attendees approach him, and others just take their seats the way Charles had. Based on Kevin’s expression and gestures, Charles assumes people are coming to him for advice. Maybe the prophet for the Smiling God religion is similar to a priest in Catholicism? Not just speaking the holy words, but advising how to live by them as well? Charles quickly takes note, jotting it down.

As he’s drawing a very theologically important and anatomically correct heart (including teeth and marrow) next to Kevin’s name, a woman sits down next to him, prim, proper, and shaking.

He looks up. She’s aggressively blonde, hair cut short to her chin, and has on a formal business suit with a skirt to her knees. There is no yellow or orange, which is traditional attire to Temple of Joy gatherings, and on her face are deep black tattoo lines in the shape of a frown. Immediately, he knows this woman is Lauren Mallard, and he hates her. (He’s never actually met her, but Kevin hates her. It’s the principle of the thing.)

“You’re with him, I take it?” She gestures in Kevin’s direction. He nods curtly, unsure of what she wants. “I thought so. You’re wearing a theologist’s coat. Do you know that Kevin is a fraud?”

His brain is frazzled for a moment before he spits out, “I really don’t care about your opinion of my boyfriend.”

“No, of course you don’t,” she laughs without smiling. “Why would you? You and him are probably very similar, all unproductivity and… you know.”

He doesn’t.

He also doesn’t need to respond, because Kevin appears in front of the two of them, leaving a few congregation members straggling in the center of the room, waiting for his return.

_ “Lauren,” _ he purrs, his black eyes going wide and his third eye dripping a single line of blood. Charles wants to reach out and wipe it away, but he doesn’t think Kevin would appreciate being touched right now. “You’re in my temple.”

She chuckles, still with no smile. “I am! It’s so good to see you keeping the Smiling God and Its ideas alive. Beliefs centering on productivity and obedience are  _ so _ important in these times, aren’t they?”

Kevin pretends he’s not seething and bleeding from rage and does a horrifically good job in Charles’s opinion. “I didn’t keep it alive for  _ productivity _ and  _ obedience. _ StrexCorp was defeated.”

“Destroyed,” Lauren corrects cheerfully. “‘Defeated’ implies. Well. Defeat. And victory. You can never win a war against an idea.”

“What an interesting theological take!” Kevin giggles, his smile going wider than Charles is comfortable with, wider than he knows Kevin is comfortable with. “Leave my temple before I kill you.”

She stands up, toe to toe with him, finally smiling. It’s a horrifying contrast with her tattooed frown. “Aw, Kev. That’s exactly what I mean.” She taps Kevin’s forehead, not even a centimeter away from his third eye, and Kevin hisses. “You can’t destroy an idea once it’s been brainwashed into a bastard’s mind.”

She turns on her heel and leaves, her shoes echoing in the temple even though there’s plenty of chattering among attendants. Kevin’s hands, balled up at his sides, are shaking, and Charles wants to reach out and hold them.

“Kevin,” he whispers, gentle, wanting to pull him down from whatever cliff he’s staring down the ledge of. “Kevin, it’ll be okay.”

He takes a deep breath, his smile still unnaturally large. “Of course it’ll be okay, love,” he assures in a tone so airy Charles doesn’t know how Kevin is still on the ground. “I’m a prophet. She can’t touch me.” His words are punched out through his teeth, and then he turns and meets Charles’s eyes. “I have to get back. The service starts soon, and the Leonards always need help with something before we start.”

Charles watches him return to the center of the room, the center of these people’s lives for the moment, and he thinks he’s the only person who notices the shakiness of his legs as he walks.

The service starts soon after, and Charles wants to stay focused on Lauren and what Kevin must be feeling, but as soon as Kevin opens his mouth he’s enraptured. As a theologist, he’s never been a religious man, but this? This is spiritual in every sense of the word.

“Good morning Desert Bluffs Too,” Kevin calls loudly, twirling around in his robe to see everyone. “And isn’t it just that? Isn’t it a good morning to be here, worshipping a Smiling God, and making it a day good enough to be smiled upon?”

People hum in agreement, not a single back against the wall as they all lean forward to watch him. A red glow reverberates from his feet, a circle growing on the floor, and the little kids of the congregation stand and run to the circle. Charles doesn’t even pick up his pen.

Each child explains simultaneously what they have done for the Smiling God this week, and then they clap and scream and some of them are joyful and some of them are terrified but all of them are focused. Kevin listens intently, understanding each of them, and answers them all at the same time, many voices launching from his body.

It’s beautiful, from start to finish, and the whole service lasts a little over an hour. Charles does not take a single note, but rather watches Kevin waltz to the tune of his own voice, singing praises to the Smiling God in sync with the rest of the patrons. Every person at some point or another stands, moves around, follows Kevin to seemingly the ends of time and back, and by the end everyone is standing in the center of the Temple of Joy. Charles thinks to himself that it doesn’t matter if this is holy, if this is a religion he believes in, because it is divine. The energy pulses through the room. For a grand finale of what could have been a theatrical show, Kevin breaks open a corked bottle of some neon yellow liquid filled with teeth and centipedes and pours it onto the floor. Small crevices that Charles hasn’t noticed until now deepen, and the liquid runs through them and solidifies. In theory, he should be feeling a variety of things, the least of all not disgust considering what he saw was in the liquid, but all he can feel is changed at a molecular level.

Slowly the worshippers trickle out, many coming to Kevin and thanking him for leading the service, as if he doesn’t every week. Kevin eats it up, and Charles loves the way he preens like the natural showman he is. He can’t make himself get up from his seat and throw Kevin onto the floor like he wants to because he’s too busy watching.

Eventually, once even the last few are gone, Kevin approaches Charles, but with a start Charles realizes his face has fallen and sunken in. His third eye is beginning to drip again.

Charles stands, offering his support, but Kevin waves him off. “Let’s get you home, sweetheart. Can I walk you? I don’t want Lauren getting any ideas.”

His voice is raw, not like it’s been overused but like  _ he’s _ been overused.

“Kevin, you’re over almost every night,” Charles says, a little confused about why Kevin would be  _ asking _ to go home with him. “Actually, every night, unless Donnie and I are at your house. Of course you can walk me home.”

Kevin shakes his head. “I need to be at my house tonight.”

Charles smiles gently, following Kevin as he begins to walk. “Alright. Donnie loves it there, and honestly it’s always tidier.”

“No,” Kevin sighs. “I need to be alone tonight.”

“Oh.” Charles isn’t upset, because he knows good relationships require time for each person to continue being an individual with his own time. Charles is worried, however, because Kevin tends to recharge by silently laying in Charles’s bed and reminding himself that he’s not by himself. “I’m sure Donnie and I could find something quiet to do. If you want to be alone with other people.”

Kevin doesn’t even respond, locking the doors to the temple in an act of protection that he doesn’t often find necessary. Instead of answering Charles, he lets his hand rest on the door knob too long, his body facing away from his partner.

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that,” he murmurs. “With her.”

“She’s an asshole, Kevin. Don’t apologize for her.” Charles rarely swears, but he also rarely hates people, and is rarely affected by religions he studies. Kevin is his exception.

“If she had hurt me… or even worse,  _ you… _ ”

“She didn’t.”

“If she  _ had.” _

Both of them stand quietly, immovable, and Kevin’s head falls against the temple’s doors. His breath leaves his body in a shudder.

“Do you want me to touch you?” Charles asks, taking one step closer to him.

“When I told you that you touched me softly, you told me not to thank you. To just expect it… I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do that. You understand that, right? I told you this town is fucked up in the head sometimes. Imagine what its Voice is like.”

He turns, finally, looking at Charles. Something in his face makes him break, and as his knees tremble he begs, “Hold me.”

Charles does, wrapping his arms around his scarred body, kissing his hair, rubbing his back, touching him as softly and lovingly and reverently as possible.

“I’ll tell you everything tonight,” Kevin whispers into his shoulder. “Everything. I’m so sorry.”

Charles insists that Kevin stay home when he goes out shopping later that night. He called Grandma Josephine, who was watching Donovan for the duration of the service, and asked if it would be alright for him to spend the night. Both her and Donnie were thrilled by the idea (Donovan loves the demons, and Charles loves not to think too hard about it).

So he finds himself at the Ralphs, or the desert otherworld’s version of the Ralphs, and he picks up the important things for tonight along with a couple snacks that Donovan is running low on. He plans to make the trip quick so he can return to the slightly bloody and slightly shaky prophet currently laying on his couch. Charles’s instincts had been right. Neither of them should be alone tonight.

His plans are quickly derailed when a perky voice declares, “Kevin’s a fraud.”

He doesn’t even look in her direction, just pushes himself forward. She puts her foot in front of his cart wheel and he has the breath knocked out of him by colliding with his cart’s handle.

Charles plans to just keep going. He really does. But then Lauren hisses, “The Smiling God isn’t real. We made it up.”

He can’t help himself from stopping completely and looking at her. The store is empty. There is nothing but the sound of her accusations and his sharp breathing.

“What are you talking about? Who’s ‘we?’”

“StrexCorp. We made it up.”

_ Sweetheart, StrexCorp created the temple. _

“Are you telling me you lied to all these people?” he demands.

“Yeah, but you should expect that from me,” she sighs, and starts quickly, like she knows her audience hates her. “We needed people at their fullest productive capabilities. You’re a theologist. You know nothing quite motivates people like fear and devotion. So we put them together. No different from any other religion, really. We told them that their work pleased a smiling god, and they ate it out of our hands like they were dying. It was just a ploy, and we assumed that if we told them that the smiling god only spoke to the higher-ups, the management types, we could get away with having no proof. And then Kevin came along, and he claimed to have seen the smiling god. Claimed it came to him in some mystical vision. Let me tell you, that man is a born actor, but that’s all he is. He’s no prophet or holy man. No smiling god has spoken to him because no smiling god exists. I’m a liar, sure. But I never claimed to be a good person. Kev’s got everyone wrapped around his little golden finger pretending like he matters.”

“No,” Charles growls, gripping the handle in front of him. “No. Kevin believes. You’ve seen him in the Temple of Joy. He has a power.”

“He has a Voice.”

“If this were true, you’d have told everyone by now. You hate him. If he was really a fraud, everyone from here to Night Vale would know it.”

She hits the box of cereal next to her, a guttural noise of frustration leaving her. “Are you kidding me? You think I’d say anything? People in town would hate Kevin, but they’d  _ skin _ me. I’m on thin enough ice as it is.”

“Why tell me then? If anyone else knowing would screw both of you over?” Charles snaps, his own body trembling the way Kevin’s had earlier.

And there is that sickening contradiction of a smile again. “I want you to hate him. I want your little boy to hate him. I have done horrible things. Disgusting things. But he has done just as much. If we are all equal under the eyes of a smiling god, he should be just as not-happy as I am.”

She leaves, satisfied that her plan has come full circle, and he stays, haunted that his life is changed in a very different way that it had been just hours ago.

He doesn’t remember paying. He doesn’t remember leaving the store. He doesn’t remember throwing all his groceries in his car and driving home. Somehow, here he is, at his own front door, and reality comes rushing to him when he walks in and finds Kevin half-awake on his sofa, his face pressed against the suede. Charles almost drops the bags in his hands, and as Kevin’s eyes fully open they are both aware that something is coming to a head.

“Lauren,” Charles mutters, trying to express himself. “At the store.”

For a horrifying moment, Charles thinks Kevin has stopped breathing. But then he says, “This is a horribly selfish thing for me to say, but… I wanted to be the one to tell you.”

Charles wants to collapse. Instead, he finds himself sitting down on the sofa opposite to Kevin. “So it’s true then. It’s all true?”

Kevin looks away, unable to face the second boot that has been waiting to kick his teeth in for a very long time. He tries his best to explain. “They used to tell us that we weren’t perfect until we killed our imperfect selves. But that’s not true. Nothing is perfect. No god is perfect. It becomes perfect when you learn to accept it for what it is.” He drags a breath in like his throat is made of gravel and his teeth are falling into his lungs. “That’s what I did with the Smiling God.”

“Kevin…” Charles starts, and there is no way to end that sentence.

“What do you want me to say? That it’s not real?” he demands in a small voice, sitting up. “It’s not. There. StrexCorp needed a figurehead, and I needed  _ anything _ that would make me untouchable. This is where it got me. Does that make a horrible person? I don’t know the answer to that question. You might. In the end, we might answer it differently. But isn’t that what religion is, Mr. Theologist? Answering repulsive questions that loom above our lives in the only way we can?”

Charles shakes his head because he has no answer to anything anymore. Leaning forward, he simply pleads, “Tell me. All of it.”

_ I had been the Voice for years. For forever, actually, although a very short forever. The radio station and I were like one body, an extension of each other. I could tell when a pipe was leaking or Station Management was in a particularly foul mood. In turn, I would sometimes have random notes on my desk telling me I would be ill for the next few days, and to rearrange my plans, or sometimes blood on the bathroom walls would tell me to take an aspirin or two. You have to understand that being a Voice was a part of me. My third eye let me see everything in town, from intimate secrets told over glasses of wine to City Council meetings while I was lounging in my house. Most of the knowledge I gained was forbidden, but it was mine. And no one could take it away from me or punish me for it because it was innate. I was innate. _

_ There is no way I can describe to you what it is like to be bought. Lauren, who I had never liked because she had asked if my furry LED scarf was necessary the first time we met, was the one who negotiated the sale. She bought the radio station. Like it wasn’t my home. Like it wasn’t my body. Like it wasn’t me. _

_ This was long after Strex had been in town. But it’s the part that’ll always haunt me the deepest. _

_ StrexCorp Synernists Incorporated was a bastard of a company that came into Desert Bluffs and bought everything. Starting with the little businesses, it worked its way up, never satisfied, never having enough. I hate StrexCorp with the kind of passion I reserve for memories of my father, Charles. It repulses me to hear the name sometimes. _

_ There were plans put into place. Every one of them failed. Slowly but surely, office drones began to overwhelm the city. Signs of ‘StrexCorp: Believe in a Smiling God’ were plastered everywhere. We hated it. We were not supposed to be controlled by a god, only men and women who believed themselves to be. Reeducation became more common, and any time someone spoke out against Strex they were sent to… have their attitude adjusted. Many of them were put on drugs. I was. But that’s later. _

_ I still went to the radio station every day. A thing named Daniel would stand in my booth and monitor my broadcasts. StrexCorp didn’t see the point in a community radio outside of propaganda, which I was terrible at. In the beginning, at least. But they didn’t want to cause too much of an upset right away. A slow boil keeps the frogs in and all that. They started by requiring me to wear a uniform. And then they would put together loose scripts for me to follow. And then strict scripts. Whenever I said something… wrong, they would… shock me. Once, when they caught me speaking in code and aiding the militias, Daniel… he choked me. It felt like hours. It might have been. I couldn’t do the show for three days after that. _

_ I was so angry, but I was more scared than anything else, and all Lauren kept babbling on about was how ‘ _ _ if you look not-happy, then you’ll make other people not-happy, and then those people with make their families not-happy, and it could all spiral from there until the entire town falls apart and you will stand in the rubble, entirely responsible _ _.’ It… got to me. And eventually, one day when Lauren and Daniel tried to get into the station, I threw my body in front of the doors. _

_ It was stupid. I knew it was stupid. But I had a love for myself that extended into that station and into that town, and I was willing to die for it. I very nearly did. Often, afterwards, I would wish I had. _

_ Before I tell you anything else, Charles, I need you to know that I am  _ proud _ of my actions at the station that day. And more importantly, I am not ashamed of anything I did after that kept me alive. I can’t be. _

_ My reeducation was more severe than others’. I was the last to succumb, and they wanted absolutely no more resistance. They tried to train me to smile properly and to believe hard enough, and when I didn’t they… well… you’ve seen my face. They didn’t want me to see the rest of the town, and they hated someone having a power they couldn’t understand, so they mutilated my third eye and poured chemicals into my other two. I don’t know how I can still see. I really don’t. _

_ They made it worse because they didn’t want me to hold out hope. Hope kills tyranny. Nothing they did could stop me, though, because Cecil… poor Cecil… had told me at the beginning of all of this that we would win. I often wonder if he lied to me to give me the strength he had during the revolution in Night Vale. Or maybe his definition of victory is just different than mine. Slower. Pyrrhic. Who knows. I don’t think I have any right to ask. _

_ Life under Strex was the worst imaginable. I don’t want to make excuses for myself, but I want you to understand that this is something that you will never understand. Ever. I worked nineteen hours before my show and another three after, then I was permitted a two hour break to sleep. If you blacked out, people worked around you. Food was earned, health was earned, bodily autonomy was earned, and to earn something you had to pay for it. None of us were paid enough to live in an apartment that could accommodate human life. On good nights, I slept at the station, even if it was a haunted rendition of what it used to be. Have you ever imagined what you would look like without organs, Charles? I don’t have to. The radio station stripped bare and mutilated was a crime against my own being. There was always so much blood. Sometimes they made me kill workers who weren’t doing enough. I think that’s how I lost so many interns. I wish I could tell you I knew for certain, but I can’t remember. Some parts are just blurs of colors and the high of whatever they gave us, and some parts are so vivid that a smell can make me forget where I am entirely, even now. _

_ What I do remember is the pang of hunger. Do you know what that’s like? I have gone three days without eating. Rations were low, and they trained us to be selfish, a cutthroat group of barely-humans who lived together yet miles apart, but I couldn’t eat my share. I just couldn’t. My interns were all so young. I gave them all of what I had. I remember that whole week, and I remember blacking out. I don’t remember waking up. That part is just another blur. _

_ I needed something, Charles. I was so desperate. I couldn’t walk some days, but I still dragged myself on my hands and knees to work. My tattoos had long stopped moving because of how many times they were cut, how many times I was beaten. _

_ So one day on the radio… I pretended I had a vision. I claimed that the Smiling God had spoken to me, and that It had begged me to write Its works. People loved it. They wanted proof that StrexCorp wasn’t doing this for no reason, that all of this hard work was being smiled upon by a loving being. I was StrexCorp’s greatest piece of propaganda suddenly. I should have taken it back once I realized it was all fake. I know that. But… remember you can never understand what we went through. It’s impossible. _

_ By the time StrexCorp fell to pieces, I had given the people hope. Who was I to take that away? How could I reveal I had lied the whole time? And selfishly… how could I give up this sense of being untouchable? Power is safety. And I know StrexCorp is gone. But Lauren’s right. You can’t win a war against an idea. _

Kevin’s third eye is gushing blood. His knuckles are white against the couch. Charles has reserved every reaction, every urge to scream or vomit or hug this man so tight he never gets hurt again, but now the story is done. Kevin watches him, and as Charles gathers what thoughts he has left, Kevin speaks again.

“I know I should have told you before. I’ll be blunt now. You will always be with a fraud. You will kiss and touch and fuck a liar every night, and then you’ll wake up to him playing with your son. I can’t give up my temple. I won’t. I’m a selfish and cruel man, a selfish and cruel  _ prophet, _ and I will have to remain that way for the rest of my life. But I will get on my knees and beg you for forgiveness, Charles. Can you move past this? Can you move past me making a joke of your career and your studies and love me anyway? I won’t be hurt if you say no. Which is, of course, a lie. But I’ll be less hurt if you just tell me now. It wasn’t right for me to lie to you for this long, but so help me, I will never tell you anything but the truth for the rest of my life, starting with this: I’m sorry.”

Kevin is giving him every option in this. But really, Charles knows there isn’t a choice. There hasn’t been since he heard Kevin’s Voice on the radio. There hasn’t been since that first night in Kevin’s house. There hasn’t been since Donovan and Kevin ran around the amusement park together and Charles had seen something bright in both their eyes.

“I love you, Kevin. You did what you had to do to get you here, with me and Donnie. I will never be ashamed of what you did, either.”

Charles had thought Kevin was emotional before, but now the man gags on his own relief, falling forward and crawling across the couch to get into Charles’s arms. He kisses him desperately, hands clinging and blood getting between them, but Charles just wipes it away. Kevin lays himself on top of Charles’s chest, his head buried in his neck, and the two of them have attached themselves together for eternity as far as either is concerned.

With Charles’s hands on his back, Kevin stops longing to be untouchable, if just for a moment.


End file.
